Chefs clash over the virtues of the '5:2' diet

It is the diet that lets you butter your bread, eat a wedge of cheese and
enjoy a glass of wine – as long as you starve yourself for two days a week.

Earlier this year Fearnley-Whittingstall extolled the virtues of the 5:2 dietPhoto: Paul Grover

By David Millward and Charlotte Cross

8:15PM BST 23 May 2013

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, who lost eight pounds in just over a fortnight, thanks to the diet has described it as “rather exhilarating”.

But other leading chefs are rather less impressed by the feast or famine approach in which dieters eat what they want for five days a week and limit themselves to no more than 600 calories for the other two, with women being limited to an even more meagre 500.

Raymond Blanc has now dismissed it as ridiculous and Heston Blumenthal advocates exercise as the best way of shedding those pounds.

Earlier this year Fearnley-Whittingstall extolled the virtues of the 5:2 diet.

He wrote: “But The Fast Diet says I can continue to butter my bread, cheese my butter, and raise my glass – at least for five days a week. It also promises much more than mere weight loss.”

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“It will reduce my bad cholesterol, protect me against cancer and even sharpen my mind. It pretty much promises that I will live longer, and healthier.”

He is not alone, other disciples of the 5:2 diet include actor Benedict Cumerbatch and Phillip Schofield.

But Raymond Blanc, the doyen of chefs, said “It’s ridiculous.”

“The British are so messed up about food. They have fear and guilt, they binge and purge. Why can’t they just enjoy food? There’s no food culture here, like in France, although it’s growing.”

Heston Blumenthal is equally scathing. “If you look at the diets athletes go on, they don’t starve themselves. If people want to lose weight they should exercise.”

Nutritionist Fiona Nave, based in London, said she would never recommend the 5:2 diet to any of her clients, saying she had doubts about the research.

"It's not a sustainable diet – it's a diet which will see weight rebound," she said.

"It is really unlikely that it will create long-term health changes or help people to keep the weight off.

"In addition, there are short-term health risks to consider. People could find they get dizzy, feel sick and could even pass out. And if someone was diabetic, for example, it could be extremely dangerous."

Steve Parle of the Dock Kitchen, North Kensington, was not an enthusiast for the latest fad diet. “It sounds horrible,” he said.

“I don’t like the idea of starvation. I am lucky enough to be reasonably young and slim, so perhaps it is not my place to say.

“But it does seem unpleasant, feasting and fasting all the time and they always say if you don’t eat three meals a day, it is worse for you.”

The exact origins of the diet are unclear. Brad Pilon promoted intermittent fasting about six years ago, although the principles are said to date back centuries.

Clinical trials by Dr Krista Varady in Chicago stimulated interest and the Fast Diet book by Dr Michael Mosley, a medical journalist and Mimi Spencer, became a publishing sensation when it appeared last year.